Questing For Puzzles Again

Puzzle Quest 2 on Steam

 

I saw this a while ago on steam, but was unprepared to pay the full asking price, as is the story for me with most games on steam. So again I wait and yup it goes on offer for £9.47 on this weeks midweek madness, so I snapped it up post haste along with another fab little indie game VVVVV which is on off for about £3.50 atm. Back onto Puzzle Quest 2. I never played the first one, but i heard all good things about it so was well up for paying the offer price to play it.

A cute and casual RPG/ puzzle game. Very much in the fantasy RPG genre, where you control your selected char (male of female) take it around the world and visit various towns and lands talking to and helping NPC with their various quests and picking up loot, gaining XP to level and equipment to use. ITs all good, what makes this game different is the way to deal with mobs, loot and the environment. IT all comes down to a bejewelled like battle.

Both you and you opponent (say a goblin) take turns in swapping jewels to make lines of 3, 4 or 5 or more if you can to gain there amounts in coloured jewel. So 3 greens in a row gives you 3 green jewels these add up and can be used for various spells and moves. So healing need say 15 green jewels, see how it goes, continues making green lines when you can till you have enough to heal or injure your opponent. There are also other way to deal damage lines of skulls to deal direct damage and fists that give you points to deal damage with your equipped weapons. the winner is the one who is still standing after there opponent reaches 0 hit points

 

This jewelled grid is also used for breaking down doors and collecting loot. Its a very insidious little game :P  You start off playing 10-15 mins next thing you know its 4 hours later and you are loving it while giving your brain cells a work out. Its just like Bookworm adventures 1 and 2 deluxe (Also awesome little games to get the old grey matter firing). So many hours spent trying to find the word Zealot in each grid of letters in BWA 2 :D

This is with this game its alot harder than you think. I started playing it on normal and found that i felt the game stacks in favour of itself. Sometimes if you go with the suggestion the game suggest it usually give the Mob a home advantage of a huge bonus run of jewels and damage, which just isn’t fair. After being beaten a number of times flat and getting the “epic fail” achievement. ROFL I’m a noob i know, but MMO’s are my game usually. Long story about why I bought PQ2 and wasn’t playing LotRO, needless to say I’m a Virgin Media customer and LotRO doesn’t like VM very much, and after yesterdays fiasco with connection services.

So after being wiped out a number of times I started thinking differently, well more additionally. Instead of think just about what I needed colour wise I also started to think about what my opponent needed, and snapping up the colour they needed and I found this works rather effectively.. See the pic above the Orc needs Red for both of his attacks. If you snap up red jewels whenever you can he wont be able cast anything but his weapon damage when he has enough fists. Doesn’t matter how much yellow or blue has has without red he cant use his attacks. And this way the key to my success.

To much you will see this from your opponent and not you.

I do however believe the game cheats (that’s my excuse) the game is far to clever for my liking gaining huge amounts of jewels in 1 move or skills that allow it to gain more than 1 move per turn, its far to clever for its own good, and its only downfall its frustrating to see the game getting huge combos cos you just aren't clever enough. being defeated isn’t such a big deal, but games shouldn’t make you feel dumb and this game does that quite a bit. I hoping its just me being tired and unable to concentrate very well and that I can get more in the game even tho I lose battles alot.

Its a good game tho and one to defiantly one to get while its on offer, a great casual game easy to play and save when you only have 15/20 mins or so to play. Also good for those wishing to exercise their brain matter.

How can a Basilisk be so good at bejewelled, does it have a DS stashed somewhere?